Once upon a time I read a book written by a woman who claimed to have died (unwitnessed) and gone to heaven. I was willing to suspend disbelief until she stated the following~ only True Christians go to heaven.

My Christian friends will have to forgive me, but when I read those words I knew she was full of shit.

Anyone who has had an NDE, a Near Death Experience, will tell you heaven is not exclusive.

I’m Jewish, among other things.

***

I was part of a study about NDEs in children and adolescents. I was asked a question, a silly question, which made no sense to me at the time.

The grad student doing the interview asked, “Do you wear a watch?”

I said, “No.”

She asked, “Why not?”

I said, “Because they just stop working. They break after a few weeks.”

She asked, “What do you mean, they break?”

I said, “Well, they quit working. I went through nursing school without a watch because they kept breaking. When I graduated from nursing school my aunt gave me a really nice Swiss watch. Within six weeks it stopped working. I took it in to be fixed twice, but the watchmaker couldn’t find anything wrong with it, so…”

She asked, “Did you buy another watch?”

I said, “I bought a couple of cheap watches, they broke too. I’m a nurse, but I don’t wear a watch. I depend upon wall clocks when I take vital signs.”

I learned later that people who have experienced NDEs all say the same thing~ They don’t wear watches. Watches break or just stop working.

Weird, huh. As far as the significance goes, your guess is as good as mine.

So yes, NDEs… I remember everything that happened when I was dead.

I remember when I was dead everything made sense– but if you ask me ‘what’ made sense I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was like this– I had no more questions.

I remember what I was told before I came back.

Yes, I left my body. I watched everything happening below me. I didn’t care about my body, it was nothing more than an empty shell. I cared about my sisters. I was sorry they had to see me die.

I was pulled away by ‘someone’. He didn’t identify himself but he was very familiar to me. We surfed on a wave of light and I remember reaching the speed of light and crossing over. Before we reached the speed of light, I could still differentiate ‘things’. Once we crossed over a threshold, all things became one thing and nothing at the same time.

I saw God~ I’ll describe Him tomorrow if you really want a description. I saw what I suspect is His other aspect, like two sides of the same coin. I saw heaven. I saw what I can only describe as hell.

My companion stayed with me the entire time.

I didn’t want to come back here. I begged to be allowed to stay, but I wasn’t dead enough. And so I was sucked back into my body– which was the only time I experienced fear. Claustrophobia would be a more apt term for what I felt.

I was sucked back in and smacked against the inside of my skull. Panic stricken, I struggled inside my body. The man with me smoothed me into my limbs. He sort of melded me into myself.

And then I felt pain.

There’s a baseball player whose father had an experience almost identical to mine. Can’t remember any names, but when I read his account I recognized it as truth.

All right, that’s enough for now. I am still super tired and have re-writes staring at me.

Be well. Julia

P.S. Thanks to the men and women in our Armed Forces and our Veterans everywhere.